Wise Monkey News is here to provide young people an opportunity to discuss the issues that affect their lives. We hope that, through your participation, this website serves as a forum for the development, exchange, and expression of ideas that will prepare us to assume our positions as the leaders of tomorrow's world. Have something to say?
At home in Santiago de Chile
by: Claude Pomerleau, C.S.C. - printed on 10-18-2000
My first visit to Chile was in early 1971 to research a dissertation for the University of Denver on the changing relationship between the Catholic Churches of Latin America and the Catholic Church of France.
Do animals feel pain?
by: Peter Singer - printed on 11-07-2001
Excerpted from Animal Liberation, Peter Singer, 2nd
Edition, New York: Avon Books, 1990.
Do animals other than humans feel pain? How do we know? Well, how do we know if anyone, human or nonhuman, feels pain? We know that we ourselves can feel pain. We know this from the direct experience of pain that we have when, for instance, somebody presses a lighted cigarette against the back of our hand.
In search for all the news that’s fit to print
by: Casey O'Connor - printed on 11-28-2001
I spent the first four months of my time in El Salvador reading the right wing Spanish language newspaper La Prensa Grafica. Shortly after the attacks of September 11th, however, my housemates and I decided to look for another, possibly more complete, version of the news, and so we ended up with the The New York Times on our table every morning. After my initial euphoria due to the presence of a credible English language periodical wore off, I realized that a significant portion of the news seemed to be missing from the paper that claims to publish “All the news that’s fit to print.
Chain reactions will ripple the economy
by: Mono Vergara - printed on 09-26-2001
In a few minutes, hopes and dreams collapsed; with them, many years of prosperity and confidence were buried under the rubble. It was a decade in which foreign trade almost doubled, creation and development were increasing in an unstoppable manner, and the economy was lying with great comfort. Then, right after the attack many factories and shops closed, companies were forced to cut personnel, and consumer’s confidence suddenly crashed.
The Giant of Africa Comes Up Short
by: Anu and Tomi Oladele - printed on 01-31-2001
After 40 years of independence under alternating military and civilian regimes, where does Nigeria stand today? Wonder with me…
A great oil boom in the 1970’s exposed Nigeria’s abundance of natural resources, especially hydrocarbons. She was the top oil producing country in Africa and among the top five oil producers in the world. Because of this, the Nigerian economy was completely dependent on its oil sector, which continuously supplied 95% of its foreign exchange for two decades.
Coal plant threatens lives in Thailand
by: Meghan Molenda - printed on 04-10-2002
Progression and invention are two of those highly valued American ideas that permeate our culture, right up there with wealth and power. We are always looking for better ways of doing whatever it is that we are doing, and therefore we are suckers for anything new because "new and improved" signals progression, which is valued. With this in mind, it would seem that our old methods of doing things would become outdated and not even put into question, much less practice.